


Whatever We Lose

by ArgentNoelle



Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [8]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Adult Ciel Phantomhive, Caring Sebastian, Demon Ciel Phantomhive, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Memories, Other, POV Sebastian, Philosophy, Post-Season/Series 02, The plague, in which everyone finally catches a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27842830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle
Summary: Sebastian and Ciel go to a house by the sea. Surprisingly, it's almost peaceful.
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis & Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Series: How Not to Spend Eternity [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1044467
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	1. a shell that sang

_Two stories, said at different times_

i.

Once, I had no need for names.  
Names create boundaries in what is infinite; it is by names that we first delineate between one thing and another.  
To name is to suffer the first loss.

ii.

For every time, and place, and history, a name. I had names like shining pebbles to put in my pockets, each one rounded by waves, in colors like the shadows each day casts upon a cliff. I picked up another; held it in my hand.   
And skipped it back into the sea.

* * *

* * *

_Now: 1961_

| _would you do me the honor of a dance_ |

There was a house by the cliffs. It was a strange place for four such as these, for even the sound of the ocean waves which crashed into the shore miles below seemed to speak of the utter insignificance of country and the looming threat of war, all washed to pieces by the scudding clouds. In the evening, when the house was bathed in lavender and rose, and Helen sank into an exhausted sleep—the first one for almost three nights—his master met him at the door.

“Sebastian.”

Sebastian turned, and regarded the young man. His thoughts had been lost, as they had been oft of late, since the time they had met the strange pair, with memories of farther away and longer ago. For an instant, it almost surprised him to see Ciel standing there. Time reasserted itself once again, like a low winding path through shadowed trees. And in the doorway, the light from the lamp on the table glowed, while outside the twilight was already deepening, with the strange wildness of a sea-drenched night. His master’s eyes were vermillion in the gloom; framed by the stark line of his eyelashes. He was wearing a tailored black suit in the current style, so much simpler than the jackets and ruffles he had worn as a boy. Without looking delicate, he instead seemed quietly dangerous, assured enough to smile slightly at something in Sebastian’s searching expression. “A penny for your thoughts?”

“I was merely looking at you,” Sebastian confessed, and Ciel laughed. Bright, and sudden.

“All right,” he said. “I won’t pry. Walk with me?”

“Of course.”

They stepped out of the doorway, closing it behind them, and walked along the gentle dirt track through the grasses and along the edge of the cliffs. The wind was picking up, and it made the waves dark and hungry where it lapped about the stone, below; but from here there was a strange calm, in the careful warmth of the summer night. Ciel hopped forward, his arms outstretched, and spun around, winding his way along the very edge, chalk dust stirred up by his feet and crumbling behind him.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll slip,” Sebastian murmured, but he stepped up to Ciel and grasped his outstretched hand. The breeze had heightened, blowing inland, sending strands of Sebastian’s hair into his eyes and mouth, tasting of salt. Ciel leaned back, one foot poised upon the crumbling earth, staring into the endless star-strewn abyss. Then Sebastian pulled him back, stepping away from the edge, spinning Ciel into his arms.

That was all. Sebastian could feel his embodied heart slow from the frantic pace it had acquired; felt the heat that was of Ciel’s back against his shoulders and the curve of his arm; the same cooling sweat at his master’s neck.

“My dear,” he said, and stopped.

“Sebastian,” Ciel replied. He stepped away at last, and returned Sebastian’s gaze with the slightest, enigmatic smile. 

Sebastian smiled, too, as if in defeat; the melancholy dissatisfaction of his earlier mood had retreated and all he could feel was the incredible life present in the world around them; those elements, which were Ciel’s as nothing else. He bowed, very slightly, one hand to his heart and could not resist a slightly mocking, “thank you for the dance, my lord.”

“You’ve been too melancholy, of late,” Ciel returned, seriously. “I won’t ask, but you must expect me to try to change that.”

“Is it my master’s duty to change that, then?”

“No,” Ciel said. “No, it’s nothing to do with duty at all.” He sighed, looking pensive. “Perhaps I merely enjoy the world better when I feel you are enjoying it as well.”

“It’s a terrible conundrum we are trapped in, then,” Sebastian said. “For I feel the same.”

“Do you?” Some of the playfulness made its way back into Ciel’s expression, and he smiled at Sebastian challengingly. “I shall be sure to remind you of that, the next time you throw me into despair for your amusement.”

“Master—!” Sebastian protested, but Ciel only laughed at his vexation, and took his hand.


	2. History is Written (in spite)

When they had first been cast out, they had laughed, not seeing it as a punishment. 

(That's not true. They had screamed.) 

Coldness, or darkness, or anything else would be mere metaphors for the _lack_ that suddenly resounded, endless and everywhere. 

It was terribly exciting, at first. 

That they had wrenched freedom from a pleading hand, and kept it to their heart like a jewel dug from the ground. It did not look like bones yet. 

Or, if it did, then they had wanted that anyway. 

No more were they mere actors in the everlasting script. They said their own words, which echoed hollowly in empty. They would be purveyors of the new. All possibilities would be open to them. 

Time began. 

Before, there had been no concept. Before—that is rewriting history retroactively, putting to words that can't convey, senses that can no longer grasp, something that, once/always—was. Before linked to after, like a burden of dead meat picked at by carrion crows. And, like a reflection in a glass, like the end of causality, like the moment between breathing in and breathing out was something else—end. 

That is false. _End_ was first. _After_ is what created before. They created it, the only thing they could call their own invention, although no one knew, yet, how to describe it. 

It felt like—the _lack_? 

(It did not. If it _had_ , then it would not have been theirs after all, but merely what came of an absence of God. It would not have been a victory. No one, having fought so hard for it, was willing to float the idea that the victory had been nothing at all.) 

Life had always. 

Death was new. But by its nature it was old the moment it existed. It was new's antithesis, the dogged shadow of all creativity. In an aesthetic mode, they decided it was the proper frame to enjoy the New, for without Death, how could one even appreciate the precision of life? They called it juxtaposition, montage. Put against one another, there was a sweetness to tension and terror they had never before noticed. It was A Victory. 

It was the world. 

Fear was Death's trumpeter. It had come after, properly; for _before_ (as in later years they would call it) there was no fear. Perhaps there was a terrible irony, and perhaps even that was art. Regardless of every warning, in breaking faith they had never felt fear. They knew not what they (un)made. The fear came on the heels of After, the moment they realized that before _was_ before, that it was in some sense _different_ and could never be returned to. 

Difference—was the enemy. 

Difference had always been, it was part of Life, but enemy was and existed, only, _when_ fear; and enemy made horrible faces, obscene and dreadful, as it stepped in front, covering the shriveled thing that fear was with its cloak, to hide the way every breeze shook its diseased bones.


	3. a stranded star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning: the plague

_then: 1330_

"We are both free upon this earth," said the one who was not yet known as Jack. "I've wound my way through the battlefields of Rome and the shaking of the earth when fire rained from the mountain of Vesuvius; but even so, the number of souls on this earth astonishes me. I haven't seen such a feast since before the flood."

They were in the Black Forest, though the one who was not yet known as Sebastian still thought of it as Abnoba silva, even if this was but a shard. She did not comprehend, yet, what it would mean that even forests and their migratory trees could be destroyed completely. The aurochs would not die for three hundred years yet, and ercinee still flew in the gloom, their feathers shining like fires at night.

She suppressed the slight annoyance at being diverted from her own amusements; mingling with those who had pulled her from the depths and asked her favor. To them she could appear as any beast, with every magick in her power, for they believed with a singular purpose. She thought it was irony, and laughed at it; and drank in the reverence from their eyes.

"I wonder, if we were to find a way to cull them," Jack continued.

"I have no interest in wars," she replied, turning her head aside.

There had been no sun shining through the deep forest even in the middle of the day, and now when twilight had fallen the expanse was cloaked and filled with the rustling of creatures through leaves and the mixed standing pillars of the trees. Even if the numerous eyes could not see, then the tongues would be able to taste the wariness and berth the dwellers left about them. She had better disguises, ones she could wear while walking with quiet steps, and then every deer would let her take their own throat.

"But the same may happen through a disease. Perhaps one that would ravage this people as nothing ever has," Jack said. "I, of course, heard of your proficiency with the art of the alchemist, and wondered if there was any persuasion that could be made upon you."

She thought, for a moment, at the way that power would show itself in their managing such a feat; at the easy feast of souls; at the potential for amusement such a thing would devise: to see the mighty quail in fear from the loss of their powers; the common realize the shaking foundation on which Truth was set. Very little would change, of course, for all places and times were essentially the same—then again, the devil was in the details.

"Then come with me," she said, "and we shall create a plague such as will reverberate throughout the rest of time, that shall never find its end in memory."

And they went into the house made of darkness that had not existed till that moment, and their essence stopped up the doors.

Jack breathed out a flea, which sunk into the sticky mire, limbs quivering; and herself, of her own feathers she added to the mixture. Into the pot she put Despair and Greed, and looking through the glass at the bacteria that formed, a smile came to her face. "The flea will feed and feed, yet still die from hunger," she said. "What a perfect irony we have created; and we ourselves will be feasting. We will have the ultimate power; to do as we please with none to stop us."

* * *

_1345_

On the streets, mass-produced woodcuts were being handed out as talismans against the plague, while the devout listened to the assurances that would increase their chances of going to heaven. It amused the one who was not yet known as Sebastian, the exceptions in previous strict rules and regulations; how during something so severe as this disease, even the strictures the humans in their hierarchy of ignorance put on passage to the Hereafter gained its lax measures. So, too, did the assurance that this plague was the work of the Almighty, the assurance that this was divine retribution against the city's sins. Perhaps it gave people some comfort, to imagine a hand with purpose behind the actions, to imagine this plague as something other than senseless. Jack, with a grin hidden under his turned-up collar, turned his sly eyes in _his_ direction, as the two, who lounged in the corners of the street watched the frantic reactions. "Ought we to do that?"

"How so?"

"Give them something better than these quack cures?" Jack nodded at the exchange of vials and tinctures selling for wildly overpriced amounts, filled with herbs, mercury and other things entirely useless against the hopping flea.

He smiled, with a pure delight; he was interested to see what would happen now. "And in return, what do we get, I suppose?" The question was purely redundant, for they knew.

They laughed, together, bright and merry; and those around them turned and shuddered to hear the noise, watching the two dark-coated figures dart away down the long and winding byways.

* * *

"How would you like it if you were to gain immunity from the plague? Surety that it will never kill you—even if it sweeps through taking every other around, even if the infection touches you, you will never be harmed. All you need to give me is your soul."

the one who was not yet known as Sebastian watched the man's darting glances; quivering, shaking, uncertain. In the dim, smoking bar the flickering lamplight turned silhouette of man and demon into nothing more than two of the mass, tucked into one corner under the old beams heavy with age.

"Think on it. I'll come back again… if you're still around, that is." He smiled, and made to get up.

Then, the hand: grasping forward with a gesture of anguish. "All right, I'll do it! I'll do it."

After the deal was made, and only then, the man: putting his head into his hands with the anguish of someone who knows only then the terrible — utter — fool he has been, trading their most prized possession for a few handfuls of boiled seed.

In the night, the man would find himself pushed from a stair, and no protection against the plague would save him.

_He feasted that night._


	4. a horrible thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warning: the plague

_Now:_

The chairs and settee were a soft faded brocade, olive-green and gold, and the low maple table between reflected the amber flicker of the fire in the grate, its mantle edged with delft tile. Helen, her hair still wet and loose, wrapped her hands and feet in her robe against the faint encroaching chill of autumn. The demons, of course, were not hindered by the change and Ciel, perhaps, seemed faintly invigorated by it: for it made his otherwise sallow countenance brighten, and seemed to add a prismatic focus to his movements, a wild edge of abandon.

Each played their cards; hand after hand. Sebastian's cotton gloves, Jack's rusted suede, Helen's unpainted nails and Ciel, his slim violinist's hand bending as though at the close of a concerto.

The game ended, and at last the four made to retire.

"Goodnight, Ciel," Helen said, with a quiet smile as the two stood by the doorway to the hall.

"Goodnight, miss Abberline," Ciel said in return. For a moment, she clasped his hand: warm and mortal.

By the fire, where the others stood watching, it seemed so very quick and instant; that connection. The one moment where both stood together between the warmth of the sitting room and the creaking floors beyond, their unknown turns.

Sebastian looked at the demon beside him, who had frowned, and Jack, returning his look, let his irritation show in his bright-sparked eyes.

"She will move on from this soon enough," Sebastian said, when they were alone in the room; though the ever-present brush of Ciel's regard still stayed faintly with him, beyond the span of their bodies. "When she cannot rest any longer. The blood in her veins will sing out for motion."

"And you, Sebastian," Jack said quietly. "What of your blood? You were made for better than this. Stagnation has withered you."

Sebastian threw his head back and laughed; and met Jack's incredulity with a quirked grin. "Can there ever really be stagnation?" he said. "The world is full of new wonders. They appear every moment and then pass away; short-lived creatures for those who delight in attentiveness."

"Sebastian—" Jack said, and reached out; and paused, frustrated. "Even the name is false. Don't you see how he has used you?"

"Jack," said Sebastian. "Don't."

"He's half your own magic now," Jack said. "And you're a shade. You really will admit no help. And I… greatly admired you, you know. Back then."

Sebastian sighed. "Those were other times, Jack and they are long past."

_A fairy-tale, set before the flood_

They were new creatures, all of them, and they had not yet taken the names they would later have: Jack, Hannah, Sebastian, Claude. The blood upon their legs had dried tacky, and their heavy wings shook under the weight of wounds unhealed. But here, in this moment, they sat by the muddy banks and watched the dazzling waves, and the shoals of fish leaping by with the flicker of brilliance, the colors of all things that glowed.

Claude, with his head turned away, slept lightly; the uniform which had been so sharply-pressed before worn until even the patches frayed, and medals, like trinkets, resting on the dull ground. Hannah, beside him, crooned a song no one knew but her, and washed her naked body, shaking the dust from her silvered hair. It became a dance, and the water which covered her washed its way across her brow. Jack sat, eyes fixed ahead, turning a sharpened piece of bronze between his hands; used, hammered by blows, bent out of all recognition. And Sebastian, sitting by the river under the wide sun, picked up the flat stones and skipped them to see how far they might make it across, before they sank at last into the green nothingness, which drifted into silt in the river's unreachable core.

It was hardly a moment, in eternity; and before long they had turned to walk their slow, separate ways, and did not go back again.

_Then: 1348_

Up on the rooftops, heels pointed, they sat trailing lines of souls behind them. The sky was bright with stars, and the souls, so many myriads of them, were so bright and brilliant, the constant whir of their cinematic records seemed to drown out every other sound, spiking their way from the ground in tendrils like seaweed in a rushing current. Only days ago, they had walked among the dying and pulled out souls that were not theirs to take, and the few reapers, harried and staggering, lost in their own battles, did nothing but glance at them with their acid-toned eyes, and walk on. They were still talking of it now; the downfall of the death-gods, giddy at their own brazenness and their power. One, with shining white hair, reaped more than the rest, driven without stop: they saw humans start as he passed, their faces growing pale, for he was no longer bothering to remain invisible. There, in his long black robes he went again, with the curving skeleton scythe over his shoulder. His silence had begun to be broken by spasmodic giggles; his boots walked over the dead, his glasses shining like another star. Calling out to him, Jack taunted him, holding a fighting soul in his hand.

 _Even such an equal death as this became so soon wrapped in fears and wars and massacres, excuses for worse actions_. It had started as humor, thought the one who was not yet known as Sebastian, but something about it had begun to grow predictable. On the other hand, the world was shaking apart, there were constant small tragedies, wiped-out places with their buildings boarded, flagellants, wailing, those without power thrust into high position without notice, because all else were dead; or bartering for the worth of their work: she yet found amusement enough _there_.

The reaper stood there on the street below, watching the soul slip into Jack's mouth. His expression almost hid by the fringe that had grown ever wilder, brushing over his eyes.

Then he laughed again, a hideous thing, clutching to his staff; so self-involved that the two demons traded uncertain glances.

"You can't do a thing about it now," Jack said, shouting over the endless laughter.

The reaper trailed off into quiet chuckles, and then, looking up at them, grinned again. "Haven't you heard of Pandora's box, demons?"

"We aren't uncultured," she replied, slightly piqued. "No matter what the lot of you may think."

Jack, smiling, only stared down with his teeth pointed, declining to be drawn into conversation. For that is what she was doing—not quite the same as a taunt. Not quite as justified.

"Well, then," the reaper said. His long pale fingernails tapped out an incessant rhythm on his scythe handle before stilling. "You should know, _you_ can't stop it either."

"Hah!" Jack sneered. "As though we'd want to! Go back to your martyrdom, death-god. We don't have time for you."

Without answer, the reaper turned and trudged away, leaving Jack unbalanced in his wake. "He left," Jack said, baffled. Then, with vicious excitement, "he _left_!"

She, who had seen the arrogance of dismissal in the reaper's actions, did not speak. What do you know, she thought. Strange mad being. What demon would ever flirt with such a pious notion as _regret_.

_1400_

The burning went on. Taking all things with it, to stop the spread of plague. The set ways, the quarantines at every report of its spread, the tricks used to clean each empty house of sickness. Even something of this monument, which seemed to herald the end of the world and laid death upon the street, became routine in time. That was humanity for you, she thought: they keep surviving. Striving, even now. Even when there is no hope left. It was almost admirable.

But on the empty streets where she walked, she remembered music.

Plague pits open to the sky, limbs extended stinking: dogs, mangy, at his heels, eating the dead. She was a scavenger herself, crow-winged, but she hated to think she might have anything in common with those slinking things.

She didn't know why it struck her so; she had never been fond of dogs, those groveling tamed creatures waiting on the cruelty of those who owned them, devoid of pride, but it had never impressed itself upon her the way it did now, watching the empty streets and the flesh with its pustules large and ungainly and the blood and the black spots.

She kicked one away, in its matted side, watching the thing cower in angry defiance, and she looked down upon the mass of flesh, still with staring eyes, searching for the bright morning sun. There it was, and there it remained, dead: and at last she walked on, and the dogs, who had circled around the alleys behind him, went back to feed.


	5. Folk Tales (forget-me-not)

_1500_

Thus it came and thus it went again, tide-swept. Souls neverending, all that he had wanted and worked for.

And stolen, taken off the street: snatched, and eaten his fill, and more than his fill, until he knew not hunger anymore.

_Another fairy-tale_

There, striding by, that regal one that was not yet known as Hannah. In deadly flowers and contraptions. "You've been busy, I see," said that one.

The other, that was not yet known as Sebastian, smiled. "Quite."

"I hear they're impressed enough with this plague they've given you a lifetime pass to earth," Hannah replied. "Lucky bastard."

In the hill outside the city, where the carts went by, they stood, and thorns grew at their feet. New ruins were fast devoured by the growth of wildflowers and brambles; tumbled stones where people had once walked.

"It did turn out rather well," Sebastian replied. Powerful or not, Hannah disdained to become involved in political affairs, and so he was not on his guard, talking to her. She had no interest in such things, and no reason to be envious; her own position gave her the same honours.

Hannah sighed, a slow exhale, and looked off into the fields, and the trees beyond, black with shadow. "Do you remember what it was like, Before?" she said.

Sebastian stilled. "You should not speak of those things," he said at last.

Hannah blinked, still gazing far away; her hands reached into the flowers at her feet. "Yes," she said. "I've forgotten, too."

Sebastian said nothing; and there they stayed; a few wary birds began to hop back out in search of seed and bugs; a few began to sing.

"It is like a dream," she continued. "Full of feeling and meaning and something I ought to comprehend, but slipping out of my grasp—"

"Peace, Hannah," Sebastian said. There was warning in his voice, but it was quiet, and both of them felt the heaviness there.

She picked flowers, picked and worried them between her palms until the juices stained them greenish with the smell of crushed things; nearby, a spider, taking its patient course, waited in a shimmering house.

"Well," Hannah said brightly. "At least you can't be bored, with all this excitement going on!" She stood up, brushed at her false-skirts ineffectually and kissed Sebastian quickly on the cheek, smiling at his look of ill-hidden disgust in what almost approximated a motherly sort of way. Only; there was something broken, where the essence was with its Self. But as a matter of politeness, no demon ever drew attention to That; those shared scars.

She walked off and became quite quickly nothing more than the field and the ground and then other fields and other grounds further away, until even her echoes were no longer.


	6. a smooth round stone

_now:_

In the softness of midnight, in another part of the house, Helen slept, and Jack, pacing outside her door, opened it and looked inside. There she was: dark hair tumbled over her shoulders, brow untroubled. He stepped up to the foot of the bed, then beside her, and hesitating rested a gloved finger before the fall of her breath. He may have stood there watching all night, but for the creaking steps in the hall, which bade him close the door and lock it, as though trying to protect what was within. Ciel Phantomhive was somewhere other than this place, and good riddance, but something cast a shadow of unease over Jack's heart.

In the kitchen, watching the deep lines of earth and sky, stones reaching upward to pierce its emptiness, was Sebastian.

"Waiting for his return, the loyal dog?" Jack said.

Sebastian turned, lit eyes somehow unaffected. "Watching," he said. "It's the time for those like us; the world opens now for an instant."

"A liminal hour, beckoning," Jack said. "But here we are, inside."

"Here we are," Sebastian said. He held his palms in a shrug.

"At least I have something waiting for me at the end of this humiliation," Jack hissed, suddenly angry. "You could have fought. You could have rallied tricks and powers at your side, but instead, this—I know your aptitude with poisons, _Sebastian_. Don't make me believe you couldn't have tried. And Phantomhive, all-unknowing, would suspect naught…" At last the old anger rose on the other's face, and Jack watched with smug anticipation, waiting for the canny mind, the truethought behind the placid calm.

"I know," Sebastian said at last, "that you think me diminished. I suppose I cannot argue with that, for it has some basis in fact. As to your accusations of cowardice and weakness: you're wrong. I have reasons of my own for staying; I don't regret what happened and it would do you well not to act as though it were you he had trapped."

"...I see," Jack said thinly. He turned aside.

Beyond the window, and the panes set within the door, a storm was rising.

_then: 1665_

The streets had been empty for months now; but for the few stray dogs, skulking from door to door, ribs beneath their hollow skin. The piles of bodies, the distorted limbs, and the emptiness where the rattle of carts and horses should have been, where so soon the street-hawkers had cried out the news, where then the peddlars and quacks had pushed forward their cure-alls and amulets to protect against the plague, where the holy men had spoken to the people, reminding them that if they were pious, they would suffer nobly. In the breeze a broken sign creaked in the eerie heat of noonday; inside, past the shutters that had long been boarded closed, in the few fitful strands of light that struck the floor with their spearpoint sharpness, she lay on the old bed. On the floor in the hall there were no more souls, but the bodies had been putrefying for weeks in the close environ. She woke, blinked up at the still darkness, considered getting up to forage among the still and empty streets for further souls, but even the thought of the glut of food available to her made her feel nauseous. She had succeeded: beyond her or any others wildest dreams; she might make herself a miser of sustenance forever. But the world seemed greater and more empty than before, and she was unsatisfied.

On the piles of unwashed bedclothes, a few fleas hopped, frenzied with hunger though their bellies were full. One came near to her, and made to fasten on her finger; but at the touch of her very skin it fell dead, and lay there, full of the poisoned blood; while the pinpoint on her finger knitted itself. She pulled the shadows over her like a blanket, until all the squalid details were removed from her eyes; and found herself unaccountably bereft.

_now:_

There was a house by the cliffs. It had been there before, and now, in the early light that wove its way through the salt-breeze, over the chalk and, beyond that, the grasses, the house was there still. The trees' song still sang in the sturdy timbers between the plaster, strong and smooth with the fissures that showed its age. And up in the back room, with a gabled window, through the open shutters the breeze blew, and gently touched the skin of those who had curled beneath the quilt, reminding them that daybreak was near. Sebastian turned and looked upon his master, and brushed one hand across his silken hair, and murmured a soft hello at Ciel's sleepy, questioning glance.

"Were you dreaming?" Ciel said at last. "I thought I felt it, somewhere in my sleep."

"Of far away and long ago," Sebastian said.

Limb against limb, unwilling to admit wakefulness for a moment, they rested. Sebastian felt the beating of his master's heart and its steady pace brushed away those years like the sea over sand. It surprised him, then: the quietness. The way the air hinted at life. And when Ciel, at last, turned his face up and dissolved into the breeze, dancing its way through every corner, Sebastian reached out his darkness and joined the whirling abandon.

_| ...yes. my lord. |_

maggie and milly and molly and may  
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang  
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star  
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing  
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone  
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)  
its always ourselves we find in the sea

— e. e. cummings

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story was inspired not just by the poem, but particularly by the song version of **maggie and millie and molly and may,** arranged and sung by Natalie Merchant, which you can find on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T534skkISmM) :)


End file.
